Dr. Mark Rosenblatt To Oversee UC Davis Health; Dr. Enrico Benedetti Named Interim Dean
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Dr. Mark Rosenblatt, G. Stephen Irwin Executive Dean at the University of Illinois College of Medicine and the chief executive officer of the University of Illinois Hospital and Clinics, has been appointed the next vice chancellor of human health sciences at University of California Davis where he will oversee UC Davis Health. For more than a decade, Dr. Rosenblatt has served UIC with distinction. A highly accomplished physician-scientist, he is the first person to hold the dual role of dean and CEO, ensuring strong integration between academic medicine and clinical care at UIC. Among his many achievements, he established the AI.Health4All Center at the College of Medicine, a pioneering institute leveraging artificial intelligence and machine learning to advance fairness and reduce bias in healthcare. He also developed and implemented a comprehensive strategic plan for both the hospital and College of Medicine, strengthening alignment and growth.
Dr. Rosenblatt’s contributions extend across numerous roles at UIC, including Distinguished Professor and head of Ophthalmology and Visual Sciences at the Illinois Eye and Ear Infirmary, director of the Corneal Regenerative Medicine Laboratory, and director of the Medical Scientist Training Program. Before joining UIC in 2014, he was a faculty member of the Weill Cornell Medical College for six years, including a term as vice chair of the ophthalmology department. Dr. Rosenblatt will continue to serve in his capacity as dean until January 15, 2026.
Enrico Benedetti, MD, FACS, has agreed to serve as the interim G. Stephen Irwin Dean of the University of Illinois College of Medicine. As a long-standing faculty member and physician-surgeon, Dr. Enrico Benedetti is currently the Warren H. Cole Endowed Chair in Surgery, professor and head of the department of surgery at the University of Illinois College of Medicine, and associate director of transplant surgery. Dr. Benedetti is a prominent leader in organ transplantation and in the use of robotic-assisted techniques in transplantation. He has to his credit many successful surgical firsts, including the first robotic donor nephrectomy for a living-donor kidney transplant, the first combined living-donor liver and bowel transplant from an adult to an infant, the first robotic combined kidney and pancreas procurement for a living-donor transplant, and the largest series of living-donor intestinal transplants in the world.
In addition to his many accomplishments, Dr. Benedetti is a longtime faculty member, having been with the UIC for more than three decades. Upon completing his medical school and surgical residency at the University of Florence (Italy), he moved to Chicago to complete an additional surgical residency at UIC in 1993. He completed a transplant surgery fellowship at the University of Minnesota before returning to UIC and the College of Medicine in 1994, where he rose through faculty ranks as associate professor and was named full professor in 2005. Dr. Benedetti has published nearly 400 peer-reviewed articles and more than 30 book chapters, and is the editor of the seminal book Living Donor Organ Transplantation.